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Monday, October 31, 2016

(Today's post is a guest post by 3rd graders Elizabeth and Emma. They wanted to share their idea of the #stickynotechallenge and to invite you to participate with the hashtag and Padlet.)

Elizabeth and Emma started the #stickynotechallenge. Emma and Elizabeth are both nine years old in third grade. First at writing workshop Elizabeth just finished a story and wanted to make a challenge. So she came up with the #stickynotechallenge and next she showed Emma. Emma liked the idea. They told Mrs. Sibberson. She liked it too. The #stickynotechallenge board was a tiny wall nobody ever did it so it really was just for Elizabeth and Emma at the time. One day the question of the day was How do we spread awareness about the #stickynotechallenge? because only kids and few teachers see our board. A few days later Elizabeth and Emma walked into the room and Mrs.Sibberson had a surprise for everyone. Mrs.Sibberson bought us some BIG blue sticky notes and some medium pink,orange,yellow and green sticky notes. Mrs. Sibberson told us we could use the wall outside of the room if we wanted to.

The #stickynotechallenge is how we keep trying to ask questions. Outside of our classroom we have a big board. We write down our questions on a sticky note and we stick them on the board. On our board we have the rules of the #stickynotechallenge. Our board also has two signs. One says “Little Questions” and the other one says “Big Questions”. We also have “Question of the Month”. The Question of the Month is an opinion so there can be more than one answer. Our first question of the month is What is your favorite color? Our question of the month got a lot of answers.

The #stickynotechallenge started one day on a wall by a table in our classroom.

The #stickynotechallenge grew when Emma and Elizabeth wanted "to get the word out". This is a photo of the first day, before kids and teachers added to it.

Next we are going to try to study some of the big questions. Big questions are questions that have more than one answer. Some of our big questions right now are : What are civil right?, How can you learn Japaneese? Some ways we can study them are by using the internet and in books. We also found out that we can get other people’s ideas from the #stickynotechallenge. Just in case you are wondering why do we need to keep track of our thinking? We keep track of our thinking so our brains can get bigger and we get smarter. By asking questions we can get smarter and if someone answers our questions we would learn something. The #stickynotechallenge helps us know more. We created this so people learn more and they would become smarter. The #stickynotechallenge can help everyone become smarter. Kids and adults can do it. That’s what makes it fun! Why we say don’t write your name is so that people can be respectful. If we told people to write their names we’re afraid that people might write great questions and then someone might not like the person and write a mean question. That’s why we say don’t write your name.

One day Mrs. Sibberson said “Do you want to do a guest blog post on my blog?” Emma and Elizabeth said “sure”. We also made a Padlet that people from all over the world can write questions but our Padlet you cannot answer. That is the only negative. During writing workshop Mrs.Sibberson asked Elizabeth and Emma to go over to her table. Mrs.Sibberson asked us if we wanted to make a padlet about the #stickynotechallenge. First we had to decide what we wanted our background to be. We couldn’t decide--there wasn’t really a back round that matched. Luckily Bridget was sitting at that table and she said we also could upload pictures for our background. Mrs.Sibberson had a picture of our #stickynotechallenge board so we made that our background. Visit our Padletand ask a question!!

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

This is one of a series of blog posts that continue the conversation around Still Learning to Read--teaching reading to students in grades 3-6. This series will run on the blog on Tuesdays starting in August 2016 and continue through the school year.

I looked around the room the other day and was struck by the number of students reading graphic novels. It made my heart happy. I have built our classroom collection of graphic novels over the past few years and have added so many quality titles and it was pretty incredible to see so many in the hands of my 3rd graders. I realized just how important these books have become to my 3rd grade readers.

Not only are students totally engaged in their reading but they are learning so many things about becoming a reader: Readers are finding new authors who they love. Raina Telgemeir, Dav Pilkey, Dan Santat and Jennifer Holm are authors they love and recognize. The books are making their rounds in the classroom without any guidance from me. Kids are being introduced to books with more complexity because they are willing to give new things a try when something is in graphic novel format.

(Our new edition of Still Learning to Read was released in August! You can order it online at Stenhouse! You can follow the conversation using the hashtag #SLTRead or you can join us for a book chat on Facebook that began this week by joining our group here.)

Monday, October 24, 2016

I read two great middle grade novels this week. Both were novels in verse. These seem to get me out of whatever reading rut I am in and these two were definitely fabulous choices. I would highly recommend both of them for upper elementary and middle school students.

Tuesday, October 18, 2016

This is one of a series of blog posts that continue the conversation around Still Learning to Read--teaching reading to students in grades 3-6. This series will run on the blog on Tuesdays starting in August 2016 and continue through the school year.

It is always around this time of year when I find that handing a book to a child can make a difference for the rest of the year. This is the time of year when I know readers well enough to chit chat books on the way to lunch or at recess. This is the time of year when I start leaving a book in a child's book bin that I think they might like. There is something about a young reader knowing that you thought about him/her specifically when you saw a book. There is something about handing a child a specific book that strengthens a relationship. This week, I noticed myself informally handing books to children in informal ways. This is one of the most important jobs I do--so I have to know lots of books. Always. It seems that every year my kids have different tastes as readers, so I can't just recommend the books I've always recommended. It is always a personal act--the act of recommending a book. These are some of the books I've handed to kids (or ordered for kids) this week.

So many of my kids have become Raina fans. Raina's name comes up like she is a student in our class! A few of us were chatting informally as they came in the other day about them. They especially love Smile and Sisters. This week, I pulled out the Babysitter's Club Graphix. (I seem to only have #!--my other 2 have disappeared since last year so I had to reorder!) Kids were thrilled to know about more books that Raina illustrated and there is a list of people waiting to dig into this series. (I love this kind of recommendation because it builds on what they love (Raina) but also introduces them to a new author that they might fall in love with (Ann Martin).

One of my students had fallen in love with the Zita books (By Ben Hatke) and was more engaged when reading them than I'd seen her all year. I remembered that I had received a review copy of Mighty Jack by the same author, earlier this month and I mentioned it to her and left it at her table the next day. She loved it and passed it on to another reader in the class who she thought would love it.

The Little Shaq books went around my room early in the year but they seem to be making their rounds again. Last week, I had a conversation with a student who was reading the 2nd book. We checked and were THRILLED to find out that the 3rd book in the Little Shaq series (Star of the Week) was due out THIS WEEK! It should arrive today and was the talk of the room. Not only did I get to hand a book to a child but this also built some awareness for those "hot off the press" books.

The Treehouse Books were popular in my room last year and I realized they were published about a year earlier in Australia than they are here. Lucky for Amazon, I can get copies of the books that are not quite published in the US yet which I think is the case with The 65 Story Treehouse which should arrive this week so one of my readers can read this last book (so far) in the series.

I bought the first two books in the new Super Happy Party Bears series after Ann DiBella recommended them on Facebook. I love having new books, doing a quick share in the morning before we start our day and handing them off to the first readers! Kids always love to be the first readers of new books so this is a fun way to hand books to kids. I need to read this one as soon as I can get it back as it seems like a fun read for 3rd graders.

We visited the Columbus Zoo on a field trip a few weeks ago. My kids aren't reading much nonfiction yet so I picked up two of Jack Hanna's Wild But True books and gave them to a few of the first kids to walk in the room the next morning. I always love to hand books to kids in the morning as they start a buzz in the classroom with lots of kids curious about the books.

My students know me well enough now to know that they don't have to love any of the books I recommend to them. They know that they own their reading and that when I recommend a book, they are not obligated to read it. But, they also know that I think about them and their individual tastes and needs as readers and that matters. Knowing my kids as readers and combining that with what I know about books is one of my most important roles. And one of my favorites:-)

(Our new edition of Still Learning to Read was released in August! You can order it online at Stenhouse! You can follow the conversation using the hashtag #SLTRead or you can join us for a book chat on Facebook that began this week by joining our group here.)

Friday, October 14, 2016

Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbsAlways wrong to the light, so never seeingDeeper down in the well than where the waterGives me back in a shining surface pictureMe myself in the summer heaven godlikeLooking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,Something more of the depths—and then I lost it.Water came to rebuke the too clear water.One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a rippleShook whatever it was lay there at bottom,Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.

This is a new-to-me Robert Frost poem. Seems important these days to look beyond the surface, no matter how scary that Something is that we might find there.

Thursday, October 13, 2016

Agrarian Fantasy, Amnesia and Memory Loss Fiction, and Hockey Romance are three of the “Trending Micro Genres” Audible recently identified in an email blast to members. The idea of a Micro Genre got me thinking differently about the books that have been popular in my 5th grade classroom in the first month of school.

As a part of #classroombookaday (the amazing ritual of reading aloud a picture book every day), I have stumbled into these Micro Genres:

When I was in middle school, my favorite Micro Genre was BOOKS THAT MAKE ME CRY. I read Love Story, Old Yeller, Where the Red Fern Grow, and Little Britches over and over and over again. Stretched out on my bed on a lazy Sunday afternoon, I could re-read one of those books between lunch and dinner, and I relish the tears rolling down my cheeks and into my ears as I read the saddest parts.

I’m realizing that when I have conversations with my students about genre, it will be important to help them stretch their definitions from the traditional but limited ways of looking at genre and format, help them to come up with narrower and more specific ways to think about categorizing stories, and help them identify the Micro Genres that will compel them to read and re-read.

Wednesday, October 12, 2016

This is book about how life in a world of random, meaningless squiggles turns into a life of reading a world full of meaningful text.

The book is also perhaps a commentary on school learning vs. real life learning. The pages where the character is learning his letters in school show children seated in rows of desks, while the teacher displays a chart of the letter and writes it on the board. The dialogue between students and teacher consists of teacher saying, "A is for apple," and the students repeating the sentence. It is when the character leaves school and enters his print-rich world that he can connect his learning to what he sees in his everyday life.

Like Jenni Desmond's 2015 book, The Blue Whale (reviewed here), this is an imaginative work of literary nonfiction, featuring a little girl in a red crown who is reading the same book we are. As we watch her reading, we can see how she's processing the information and making connections to the text. The book is filled with lots of polar bear facts, and in the end, when you understand the bears' dependence on ice for survival, your heart will be filled with much sorrow about climate change and the loss of polar ice.

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

This is one of a series of blog posts that continue the conversation around Still Learning to Read--teaching reading to students in grades 3-6. This series will run on the blog on Tuesdays starting in August 2016 and continue through the school year.

"Try the Starbucks App. It's life-changing," my brother told me a few months ago. He was right. I can order my morning tea from my house right before I leave and it is ready for me when I arrive. No more long lines. No more trying to predict how long my morning drive with tea stop will take. My mornings are calmer and more predictable now. A small change, but life-changing nonetheless!

A similar thing happened a few years ago as I was trying (still...in my 28th year of teaching) to figure out how to manage all the assessments and things I wanted to save through the school year on each child. I used to have file folders that worked fine but assessments have become a bit more complex. And for assessments to be useful, I want to have access to them and full file folders are not always that easy to access! Even though much of what I keep, I can keep online, I like to keep a lot of paper things. I've always believed that every piece of work can tell you something about a child and I know having lots allows me to see change over time. When I moved to 3rd grade and tried to make sense of our 3rd Grade Guarantee Law, I had to figure out a plan for all the paperwork that went along with that, This new mandated paperwork, along with the daily classroom assessments I have always kept became a bit overwhelming (well, maybe more than a bit...). I needed a new plan. Our Literacy Coach, Gretchen Taylor, shared with me the system she had used the year before as a middle school teacher--she had a mailbox/file type slot for each child in her 5 middle school Language Arts classes. That way, when she wanted to add a new note, assessment, piece of student work, etc. she just dropped it in. Easy and quick and very accessible at all times.

So, I set up the same thing and have kept it going ever since. I have cabinets in my room for storage. They are above the student cubbies. I have taken over the front portion of 3 of those and house 8 student files in each one.

So each student has a file that I can toss things in when needed. I can also easily access anything I want. This helps me in a variety of ways:

First of all, I don't have to spend a lot of deciding what to keep. I do that a lot--try to decide if something is worth keeping. With this system, there is plenty of room to drop things in and there is no reason to keep them forever--I can keep them as long as I need to. So any student samples that may be worth keeping, any quick checks I do, even a sticky note with an observation about a child can go right in these files.

This is the perfect system for sharing information with others. When I get ready for parent conferences, I can pull the pile of information out. I have lots to look at when finishing up comments for report cards. And when the Reading Support teacher or the ELL teacher comes in to look at some of the assessments or wants to add something new, they don't have wait for me or sort through my piles for what they are looking for. They have access to these anytime they need them.

I rely a great deal on digital tools for collecting and reflecting on work but there are mandated assessments, test reports, reading plans and work samples that are better saved as paper copies--better for me because I can spread them out and look at them when needed. This system lets me look at individual work more easily. It also invites reflection across time.

Because I am a person who make piles and who likes to look again and again at student work, this is the perfect organization tool for me. It is a simple idea that really changed my teaching life as it made all of the paperwork more manageable and more useful for me.

(You can follow the conversation using the hashtag #SLTRead or you can join us for a book chat on Facebook that began this week by joining our group here.)

Our new edition of Still Learning to Read was released last week! You can order it online at Stenhouse!

Our fifth graders went to Highbanks Metropark last week for a field trip put on by the Ohio River Foundation, a group that works towards "protecting and restoring the Ohio River and its watershed." The Olentangy River, which runs through Highbanks, is a part of the Ohio River watershed. Our students took part in several activities that determined the health of the Olentangy River, and that reinforced the need to conserve our fresh water resources. This poem was inspired by our field trip.

Wednesday, October 05, 2016

September - May is a frustrating time of year for a teacher to be a reader. Because there is no way to do our jobs within the parameters of the contract hours of our days/weeks, work spills over into our personal lives and threatens to rob us of one of the identities at our very core -- that of Reader. Luckily, I eat breakfast every day and I have a twenty minute commute to work.

I manage to keep a middle grade novel going in 20 minute increments as I eat breakfast. I tell myself that I should weave a professional book into that time slot some days, but I'll be honest -- I rarely do.

My drive time is my adult reading time. I read with my ears. If it weren't for Audible and the TED Radio Hour podcast, I would not have an adult reading life. I also wouldn't have very much to talk about in adult conversations since I'm not a sports fan, I fall asleep when I watch TV or movies, and I don't pay close attention to the news (for sanity's sake).

It would be easy enough not to be a reader, but as a teacher of reading (and as a person whose core identity is Reader), that's simply not an option.

There's no such thing as MAKING time to read. We all have the same number of hours in each day. So it's all about being creative in FINDING time and using it to keep my reading life alive in the September - May drought so it can flourish June - August.

Tuesday, October 04, 2016

This is one of a series of blog posts that continue the conversation around Still Learning to Read--teaching reading to students in grades 3-6. This series will run on the blog on Tuesdays starting in August 2016 and continue through the school year.

I want my students to have experience with a variety of ways to track their thinking during reading. There are so many tools and right now, I just want them to see how powerful it is to stop and notice your thinking. I want them to be able to choose tools that work for them and I use the first 6-8 weeks of school to make sure they have experience with several ways to annotate. Since our focus is on the thinking and process, the tool is really up to the child once they see some possibilities. So for read aloud this time, I chose the book Lucy by Randy Cecil. This is a book that I fell in love with this summer. I chose it for several reasons.

The illustrations in this book are key. There is a black and white illustration on each page and I want my 3rd graders to talk around both words and pictures. I find that often, at this age, readers are more apt to talk about what they notice or wonder in a visual than in text so this combination seemed perfect. I also know they will naturally find evidence in the illustrations as they talk and the "What in the book makes you think that?" type of conversation will grow.

I was able to get 12 copies of the book from our public library. This makes it possible for groups of 2-3 to share a book.

I assigned them a Thinking Partner for this read aloud. So they share their book with the same person and will think through this book with one person. Thinking with the same person across a book is different than thinking with different people every day. There are benefits to both but as we build relationships and conversation skills, having the same partner through the book is important.

There are 3 characters in the book whose story lines come together--Eleanor, her father, and the dog, Lucy. As readers begin to read more complex text, I want them to think about characters and how characters stories and relationships are often key to narrative.

So each pair of students was given a copy of the book and a stack of sticky notes and they have been jotting and talking every day before we come together and share thinking as a group.

The book and conversation are inviting great talk and we are learning so much about tracking our thinking, backing our thinking with evidence in the text, character development and having good conversations.

(You can follow the conversation using the hashtag #SLTRead or you can join us for a book chat on Facebook that began this week by joining our group here.)

Our new edition of Still Learning to Read was released last week! You can order it online at Stenhouse!

Monday, October 03, 2016

Imagine how much I was jumping up and down (and up and down) when I opened a box from Candlewick and found this inside!! I have been waiting for this book for so long! We Found a Hatby Jon Klaassen!!!!

The book is officially released next week. The official release date is October 11. I think you'll want to have it in your hands that day so I'd suggest a preorder! Here is the book trailer for a sneak peek!

I don't want to spoil the book for you but I can tell you that I LOVED LOVED LOVED it. I've given it to a few friends to read and some hugged it before they gave it back. I read it to my class and they loved it. It is better than I could have imagined. A perfect ending to this fabulous trilogy. It was definitely worth the wait.

Sunday, October 02, 2016

My fifth graders did lots and lots of work on their narratives of "imagined experiences or events" in their writer's notebooks before we ever brought a draft into their Google Apps for Education account. While we were in the notebooks phase of these pieces, I conferred with writers on an as-needed basis. When we were planning, I could listen in on small group conversations or I could take a pulse during share time to get a sense of who was struggling and needed one-on-one help. I could borrow all of the notebooks for an evening and do a quick read-through of their possible leads to sift for those who needed help and those I could use for minilessons under the document camera.

When it came time for a handwritten draft outside their notebook, I didn't give my students much time to pull together all the bits and pieces of planning, leads, and snippets of dialogue. They had a tight deadline and I was brutal -- meet the deadline or forego Genius Hour. I wanted these drafts to be rough because I wanted them to understand that their work on the computer would be to create a new and better draft, not just type up what they had written on paper and call it good. By having every draft on paper, I could easily carry them all home, read carefully through each draft, and make +/- notes for each child on my clipboard chart. Once they began their drafts on the computer, I would gain the ability to have a quick conference with each student by leaving digital comments on their work.

I made sure the initial session on the computer was a short one. All they had time to do was log into their Google account, go to Drive, open a new Doc, name it with the conventions I gave them, and share it with me.

After that first quick computer session, I used my notes from their handwritten draft and left a comment for each student that might guide their work on this next draft.

Every day or two, I read through each student's work, taking notes on what they've improved and what they still need to work on. I have a little digital conference with every student in the comments, and I know exactly which students need my personal attention, and for what. I can group students who have the same needs and do small group work, and I have digital examples of exemplary writing, along with pieces that (with student permission) I can use in minilessons for craft, revision, and editing.

Conferring is the heart of writing instruction. It's what makes the teaching personal to the words the writer has put on paper or screen. Technology has given us another very powerful way to confer with our student writers.

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About Us

Franki and Mary Lee are both teachers, and have been for more than 20 years.

Franki is a fifth grade teacher. She is the author of Beyond Leveled Books (Stenhouse), Still Learning to Read (Stenhouse), Day-to-Day Assessment in the Reading Workshop (Scholastic) and The Joy of Planning (Choice Literacy). She is also a regular contributor to Choice Literacy.

Mary Lee is a fifth grade teacher. She is the author of Reconsidering Read-Aloud (Stenhouse) and has poems in the Poetry Friday Anthology, the Poetry Friday Anthology for Middle School, the Poetry Friday Anthology for Science, the Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations (Pomelo Books), Dear Tomato: An International Crop of Food and Agriculture Poems, National Geographic Books of Nature Poems, and The Best of Today's Little Ditty (2014-15 and 2016).